


Turned Within to Stone

by SEF



Series: Death by Natural Causes [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: A'kweth, Book: Spock's World - Diane Duane, Canonical Character Death, Episode Related, Gen, Horta, New Vulcan, Vulcan Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25580743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SEF/pseuds/SEF
Summary: New Vulcan is a place of grief and underlying despair. Spock, a Horta captain, a Federation botanist, and a young boy work to bring healers to the planet.
Series: Death by Natural Causes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853977
Comments: 9
Kudos: 16





	Turned Within to Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to readers silverr and sixbeforelunch.
> 
> Fandom note: While set in the reboot universe, this story draws characters and events from two episodes of classic Trek: "Devil in the Dark" and "This Side of Paradise."

* * *

“I wept not, so to stone within I grew.”  
—Dante Alighieri

* * *

_New Vulcan, 2259_

Spock woke early on the day of...he could not say. The people of New Vulcan had not yet established a calendar or named its seasons. It was only a cool, autumnal morning. His joints ached and a mild headache, constant now, thrummed behind his eyes. He eased his stiff body out of bed, dressed in a warm robe, and walked out into the morning. 

Like the days, the flora and fauna of this place were unnamed. Oh, there would already be taxonomies accumulating in data banks. But the task of naming belonged to the Vulcans who had been driven by calamity to settle in the midst of this desert. No one was yet ready to take on the task. 

In the meantime, Spock imagined how this astringent herb would someday be used for tea, how that curious cactus would provide precious water during a kahs-wan, how poets would memorialize that whooping birdsong. He knew he would not live to sip that tea or read those poems, to see what a new Vulcan world might become. The beginning of all things, he was discovering, was as lonely as its end.

Music began to play behind a bedroom window. Something Andorian, Spock thought. He was reminded of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, which a chamber quartet had played at Christopher Pike’s memorial service. Mournful as the piece was, he was grateful that Sbirek, Sarek’s orphaned ward, had found a reliable source of comfort in music. Tragedy had turned too many Vulcan survivors to stone. 

He drew a last, deep breath of the cool morning air and refocused on practical matters. Sbirek would soon be hungry. He returned to the apartment to prepare a simple breakfast for them both.

“Coming, Uncle,” Sbirek responded to a knock on his door. He slid into a chair at the small round dining table and ate quickly. “May I go to the sports field before my lessons?” 

“You may,” Spock said. The activity and companionship Sbirek found there were essential. “I have an appointment later, but I will return to the apartment before dinner, as should you. Sarek will likely be off-world for at least two more days.” The ambassador was pleading with Federation planets for the resources needed to rebuild Vulcan civilization. 

“I remember,” Sbirek said. “Bye now!” 

The influx of Federation volunteers was having a noticeable impact on the speech of the few remaining Vulcan children. Spock found that he did not regret it. 

He recycled his uneaten kasha and had a second cup of tea. Then he worked through the set of gentle exercises Leonard McCoy had prescribed for him in another time. 

At midday Spock put aside Federation missives on the Romulan problem and walked to the health center. The facility had been established in the first days of settlement to deal with the (largely psychic) wounds of the survivors. Many Vulcans had lost bondmates; all had lost connections to family, friends, and home. In this, at least, Spock was no exception. Everyone he had ever known was in a different time. 

He took a seat in a private cubicle, closed his eyes, and focused on his breathing while awaiting his counselor. No place on New Vulcan was free from pain, but this hastily constructed building amplified it. The grief of other Vulcans pounded against his mental shields. They were slowly eroding.

When Dr. T’Den finally hurried in, nine minutes late, she seemed flustered. “Apologies for my tardiness, Spock. We have a new directive that I must address today. It concerns...marriage.”

Inevitable, Spock thought wryly, that even an ancient half-Vulcan like himself would eventually be asked about that. “Physician _and_ family matriarch. The council asks much of you, Doctor.” 

She collapsed into her chair, released a barely perceptible sigh, and nodded agreement. 

“I am happy to donate DNA,” Spock assured her. “But I do not intend to bond again. I think it unlikely that I will ever have the need.” 

T’Den blinked at him. She seemed taken aback. “No, no.” She shook her head, sat upright, and spoke briskly. “We have Ambassador Sarek’s DNA. That is sufficient.”

Spock could feel the tips of his ears burn green. He had no Vulcan genes that Sarek did not share. His human genes were irrelevant to propagating the Vulcan race. Obviously. 

The doctor continued, oblivious. “I have been instructed to discuss your ward, Sbirek.”

“Sbirek?” The boy was only 8. “I merely act as guardian while Sarek is off-planet.”

“Sbirek’s bondmate passed in the great destruction. We must act quickly to find him another suitable wife.” T’Den pushed a data stick toward him. “I have found six candidates. Please assess and report your choice to me promptly.”

Spock had thought he was accustomed to the cold application of logic to Vulcan marriage arrangements. He had been wrong. 

T’Den misread his dismay. “You will consult with Ambassador Sarek, of course. If none are suitable, I will prepare another list. But, as you know, few children have survived.”

_As you know. You, who brought us to this catastrophe._ Spock nodded numbly, palmed the data stick, and left.

Spock knew he should return to his apartment and disentangle his jumbled emotions in meditation. But he was perturbed by his own foolish assumptions and, oddly, did not wish to be alone. So he walked to a pitched-tent cafe that was popular with both offworlders and Vulcans. He took a small table in the corner. There he drank tea and calmed to the clatter of plates and conversation. 

Eventually he pulled out his handset and sent a terse message to Sarek with the names of Sbirek’s proposed bondmates. Sarek replied, equally tersely, “I return tomorrow to discuss.”

“Ambassador Spock?” A young human, blonde and fragile-looking, approached him. 

Spock recognized her at once. He had seen her name on the list of Federation specialists who were helping to build New Vulcan, and he had prepared himself for an eventual encounter. Still, he wished it had occurred on a more auspicious day.

“You don’t know me, but I knew your counterpart briefly.” She seemed nervous. “My name is Lei—”

“Dr. Leila Kalomi, botanist.” A woman he had loved, blissfully, on Omicron Ceti III, when the walls around his heart were brought down by an alien flower. 

Incredible to think that this woman had once bubbled into laughter in his arms, that he had been that young, that vulnerable. Now, more than a century later, Spock recoiled from the memory. When stripped of alien influence, he had turned away Leila Kalomi’s love and rebuilt his walls. Had that been wise? At 160, he no longer aspired to lock away emotion, only to channel it for the good.

She was puzzled. “But how did you—” 

“I met your counterpart at the Vulcan embassy on Earth,” he explained. This Leila might have had the same encounter, but if so, she would have met a Spock who had already given his heart to Nyota Uhura.

She bit her lip. “Yes, that’s where I met Commander Spock. How strange.” 

“Unsettling, I agree.” Somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear McCoy drawling, “You can say that again.”

Dr. Kalomi had the grace not to pry further. “May I join you?” she asked, indicating the chair beside him. 

“Of course.” He could hardly refuse. He _could_ change the topic. “I am interested in your work here,” he said. “Have you had any success in finding specimens that increase atmospheric oxygen?”

“Oh, yes!” Her eyes lit up. “It’s a matter of balance, getting the perfect oxygen-carbon dioxide ratio, and then finding environs that—” She stopped, made a chagrined face. “You know all that. The truth is, I’ve come to ask you a favor.”

Spock’s eyebrow went up. “You may ask.” This did not bode well.

“I hope I’m not wasting your time. Are you familiar with the Horta people recently discovered on Janus VI?”

Interesting. Apparently the new Horta generation had been born slightly earlier in this timeline. “I knew the Horta of my timeline, yes.”

“Oh, that is good to hear.” She leaned toward him, clutching her arms together on the tabletop. “You see, we have a small Horta cargo ship in orbit right now. It survived the destruction of Vulcan and has been limping here for months with comms down. Starfleet didn’t know the ship had survived.”

“Inexcusable.” Even with the chaos that followed Vulcan’s destruction, Starfleet surely had swept the quadrant for survivors. Perhaps the rescuers hadn’t adjusted their sensors to detect silicon-based life?

“Yes, you’re right,” she said. “Someone will be ‘called to account’ later,” she added sardonically. So there was some steel beneath the velvet. “We’re trying to help the Horta now. But even with repairs underway, communication is still, um...a bit rocky.”

Spock recognized the joke but couldn't pretend amusement. “The universal translator would not suffice, as Horta communicate in multiple ways, including vibrations, gestures, aromas, and telepathy.” In a few years technology would likely resolve those problems, but that was not for him to say.

“I didn’t even know that,” she confessed. “I was called in because the Horta are repeatedly sending a message that says ‘You plant them.’ So Starfleet called in a botanist.” 

“Bureaucrats under pressure are not the most imaginative problem solvers.”

She muffled her laugh behind her hand. “You sound just like Commander Spock.” 

And she spoke with the same soft accent as the Leila Kalomi he had known.

She continued. “So I transported up to the Horta ship, but I found no plant life on board. None. Only the Horta and the rocks and minerals they eat.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know what they’re asking, but I feel something is wrong, and I would like to help make it right.”

When not addled by spores, Dr. Kalomi seemed a thoughtful person as well as a dedicated scientist. Spock had forgotten. He had been too focused on his own embarrassment to acknowledge the manipulation of her feelings as well. 

“Fascinating,” he said. “So you are in need of a telepath.” 

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve asked for help from my administrator, but everyone is stretched so thin right now. And I understand that cross-species mind melds can be difficult.”

That was the sort of difficulty Spock could cope with. And he had liked the Horta very much. “I will assist you, Dr. Kalomi. Please make an appointment with the Horta captain.”

“Oh, thank you, Ambassador.” She stood up, gripped the back of her chair, and warmed him with a grateful smile. “It was a pleasure to meet you. Thank you!” 

What a dark comedy the day had been. At least Spock had found a way to be of use.

* * *

Sarek appeared at Spock’s door late the following afternoon. His eyes looked bruised. When motioned inside, his feet dragged as if he were propelling himself through high gravity. 

Spock knew full well the stress of crisis diplomacy, the knowledge of approaching disaster and the anguished frustration with those who refused to listen. “We need not resolve Sbirek’s future today,” he said. “You have not slept.”

“I will sleep soon.” Sarek dropped heavily into the closest armchair. “T’Den should not have burdened you with this task. I knew the High Council was anxious, but I did not anticipate they would act without me.”

Spock sat across from him. “Sbirek has not yet recovered from the death of his parents, sister, and bondmate,” he said. “It is too soon.” 

“Yes, but he is of age.” Sarek was grim. “The councilors are attempting to protect the future of our children. They recall that the house of Surak has not always been an exemplar of Vulcan traditional marriage.” He slumped forward and pressed his palms against his eyes for three long breaths. Words sighed out with the last exhalation. “My first bonding ended in a most unsatisfactory marriage. Yours ended in combat. And my son broke his first bond.”

Both men were silent while that admission settled. Despite the painful subject matter, Spock was grateful to be included as a family member. 

He clasped his hands in his lap. “Surely that is evidence that childhood bonding has not served this family well,” he said. “Sbirek will not suffer a pon farr for many years. We need not rush to find him a wife.”

“You don’t understand.” Sarek’s eyes met Spock’s and quickly flicked away. 

“It is not widely known,” Sarek said, attempting a cold presentation of facts,“but only a handful of newly bonded pairs have endured the plak tow here. More than half have died, both men and women.” That number was stunning, a hundred times the usual risk for hastily constructed bonds. “We do not yet know if this planet can effectively serve as the place of koon-ut-kal-if-fee. And if it cannot.…”

Horror squeezed its fingers around Spock’s heart. He had chosen this planet. It was the closest equivalent to Vulcan in Federation space. “There is no other.”

“Indeed.” Sarek bent forward, hands on his knees. “Spock, not a single family has established a place of marriage despite the urgent pleas of the council. Few will even acknowledge the despair that underlies our lives here.” He paused for emphasis before adding, “If we cannot bond, if we cannot marry and raise our children in Vulcan families, both our people and our culture will disappear.”

Extinction. It was the fate everyone on the planet feared. 

Spock slowly levered himself from his chair. He pressed a hand to Sarek’s shoulder. He was the true elder here. What wisdom or consolation could he offer in the face of even more unbearable tragedy? He had none.

He moved to survey the desertscape outside his window and struggled to find some hope that was not patently false. At last he said, “Our world is indeed gone. We must accept that and start again.” He returned to his chair. “We cannot despair. Families can be reestablished. Given current reproductive technology, there need be no shortage of Vulcan children. Your son is evidence of that.”

“You’re forgetting,” Sarek’s voice rose, choked, and became a snarl, “the ancients who bred our race for telepathic powers saddled us with the pon farr as well. Children or no, we must bond or die.”

That, at least, Spock could contest. “Yet I have not bonded with a Vulcan woman. And you have spent most of your adult life with a human. A bond between two Vulcans, set in childhood, cannot be our only option.” He added his own complaint against tradition. “You, Sarek, forget the price of such a bond, not only for Sbirek but for his child wife.”

Sarek grimaced. He shook his head ruefully. “Your mother often spoke harshly to me of the burdens the Vulcan biological cycle places on women.” 

“We suffer and burn, but they are bound in childhood to heal us. _With their bodies,”_ Spock said. “With no considered choice in marriage or family life.”

“It is our shame. I do not dispute it.” Sarek’s head tipped sideways, wobbling. “But if half of new adult bonds end in death, what else can be done?” He locked eyes with Spock. “Tell me.” 

Spock had no answer. 

“We are too few. If Sbirek dies alone in the pon farr, one of the last heirs of Surak will perish.”

Now that was nonsense. “There is no special merit in Surak’s biological heritage. If we are to begin again, we must value all our children. We must make other choices possible.”

Sarek gripped the arms of his chair and pushed himself upright. “An admirable goal, Spock, but not one that can be accomplished in the short term. The council rightly fears the end of our race within a generation. We have lost so much—even Surak’s katra. They do not believe we can lose much more.”

“And Sbirek, unlike I, can be of use.” 

That jolted Sarek. “What? That was said to you?”

“Yes, though far more politely. Apologies.” Spock should not have made his hurt so plain. “I am old, and not a full-blooded Vulcan. My choices are immaterial. But Sbirek’s are not.”

His front door slammed open. Sbirek stomped in, a flush high on his cheeks. He dropped his lute and a sportsball onto the entry table with a crash. The ball rolled off and bounced toward Sarek’s feet.

“I liked T’Nedri,” Sbirek declared fiercely. “I don’t want to marry anyone else. I won’t.”

Wearily, Sarek stooped to pick up the ball. “You will have choices, Sbirek. We will discuss tomorrow. Let us go home now.”

Spock recognized a bit of his child self in Sbirek’s mulish expression. “I want to stay here.”

“Sbirek…” Sarek’s impatient tone was familiar too.

“He may stay,” Spock interjected. “You are exhausted.”

Sarek appeared relieved by the offer. “Very well,” he conceded. He handed Spock the ball and, after a moment of hesitation, dropped a hand on Sbirek’s head. “I will be before the High Council from the early hours tomorrow. I will return here in the evening.”

* * *

The topic of marriage was revived with breakfast.

“Did you marry, Uncle?” Sbirek stabbed a large piece of mango and crammed it into his mouth. 

Spock smiled inwardly, recalling what his mother would have said about such manners. “I was bonded young, as you were. We did not marry.”

Sbirek’s brow furrowed. His voice dropped. “Did she die?”

Spock flinched. That was a question Sbirek and his peers would confront throughout life. “No. She loved another and did not wish to marry a Starfleet officer. Her choice served us both well.”

“But why didn’t you die?” Sbirek was understandably puzzled. “Did you marry someone else?”

The answer to that question was very complicated indeed. ”No, not then. I survived the plak tow. I found my bonds with friends, and my satisfaction—my joy—in my work. 

“The marriage bond is of great value, Sbirek, but it is not a requirement for a full life. As Vulcans have not yet escaped the tyranny of the pon farr, we must make choices that preserve life but also honor the needs of both marriage partners.”

“What if I choose wrong?”

The doorbell chimed, granting Spock some welcome time to form an answer. A few seconds later it chimed again, so he was not surprised to find a human on his doorstep. 

“Dr. Kalomi.” 

“Ambassador, I’m sorry to turn up at this hour, but I think we may have an emergency.” She hitched her leather pack over her shoulder, gripping anxiously at the strap.

He opened the door and waved her inside. “Of what nature?”

“Captain Grahir, the Horta captain, has been pinging me for the last hour. The repeating message is ‘They die. Plant now. Hurry.’ I can’t get any further clarification. And I have a feeling.…” She seemed embarrassed by her own humanity. “Yes, this feels important.”

“Understood,” Spock said. He had learned to respect the intuitions of some humans. “Can Captain Grahir beam us up?” 

“Yes. Oh, you will come?” Her relief was palpable.

Spock hoped such faith in him was warranted. “If my nephew may accompany us?” 

She peeked behind him and nodded a greeting to Sbirek. “I don’t see why not. Yes.” 

Spock turned to his ward. “Sbirek, bring your tricorder. I may require your assistance on this mission.” Sbirek jumped eagerly to obey. Spock donned his own customized tricorder and shrugged on a cloak. They stepped outside. 

Dr. Kalomi opened her communicator. “We have three to beam up, Captain. Ready now.”

A moment later they were in a semi-dark cargo bay facing a living rock. Captain Grahir was a bit smaller than the mother Horta that Spock had known on Janus VI. Her carapace was a deep indigo blue crossed by frothy veins of what looked like greenish-brown reticulite.

Spock had just raised his hand in the ta’al when the captain said, “At last!”

Spock’s eyebrow arched. The translator certainly hadn’t had any difficulty with that phrase. “How can I assist, Captain?”

The Horta pushed up on her tentacle-pads and collapsed down again with a squelch, a gesture that spoke eloquently of frustration. “Speak mind now,” the translator said. 

Clear enough, but Spock still had to ask. “You are amenable to a meld?” 

“Now.” 

“Very well. Sbirek, do you recall your lessons in how to end a meld?”

Sbirek stepped close to him. “Yes, Uncle,” he said quietly. “I will watch.” The charged mood had clearly made an impression on him. Dr. Kalomi rested her hands on Sbirek’s shoulders and nodded encouragement at Spock.

He knelt gingerly on the rough floor beside the captain and pressed his fingers to her carapace. “My mind to your mind.”

Only the confined space prevented Spock from reeling back in shock. Vulcan, his planet, his home, his people, Vulcan was splitting open, spewing magma and mountains and men. He saw continents shattering into pieces, shedding atmosphere and life. 

Grahir showed him her small ship rocketing away through the awful debris, her crew panicked. And then a cry, a telepathic cry, from one of the Horta crew members. Through the link, Spock experienced the call as both a shrieking emotion and a sharp aroma. “Stop! Life! Stop!”

He watched Grahir’s gifted navigator managing a path back through the debris and pinpointing 23 bodies. He felt the captain’s pride as her engineer manipulated all of them aboard through delicate use of tractor beams and transporters. 

“Bodies?” Spock queried silently. 

“Horta can live briefly in the vacuum of space,” she reminded him. 

“I did not recall,” he said. “What has become of these bodies? How can I help?” 

Grahir turned, physically and mentally, and showed him the sandstone boulders that lined one wall of the cargo bay. They were about the size of elephant calves and looked nothing at all like Horta adults or nodules.

“Who are they?” Spock asked through the link. 

“Aliens, but silicon beings like us,” Grahir said. “Ask them. Do you not know them?” She broke the link. 

Spock rose to his feet with some effort. 

“You plant,” Grahir said, again reduced to dependence on the faulty translator. “They crack. Plant or die.” 

Spock stumbled toward the closest boulder and brushed his hands across its surface. He felt a wash of warmth rather than coherent thoughts. This was a child. A child sleeping but restless. He moved to the next. And the next. All the same. 

The fourth living rock was nearly awake and wriggling against its constricting...chrysalis? That was the most appropriate metaphor Spock could find. 

He broke the connection and lowered himself to a seat against the wall. “Dr. Kalomi...these are not plants, but they are seeds. The children of silicon beings. They will soon be born.” 

He struggled to his feet. Wait...surely not….

He returned to the last child and opened a full link. “Child of Vulcan, I am Spock, of the house of Surak.” He pictured, as vividly as he could, the near-mythical A’kweth that had once prompted overwhelming joy and wonder in his distant ancestor. “Is this your family?” 

The response was something akin to a smile. “Take me there,” the child said in the link.

These silicon beings, these living rocks, were Tcha’besheh. The A’kweth. Underliers. The mysterious telepathic creatures who had inspired Surak to honor the Other, to feel wonder in diversity, to act for peace. They had survived. They were alive. _The A’kweth were alive._

Here in the dark, with no witnesses but Sbirek and Dr. Kalomi, Spock dropped all pretense of restraint. He dropped to one knee beside Grahir. “You saved them. These are the A’kweth. We revere them. We need them. All of Vulcan owes you deep gratitude.”

Grahir shook, flecks of mica sparkling. “Plant now.”

“Yes,” Spock said. “Yes, we will. But we know little of their life cycles. Can you tell me what they might need?” 

“Guess. Rock. Heat. Company.” 

“Company?”

“Minds.”

“Ah, of course. They are telepaths.” Stories said that they also had access to ancestral memories. Under the circumstances, Spock devoutly hoped that myth was true. 

“No mother. Horta need mother.”

The Horta relied on a single caregiver when their race was reborn every 50,000 years. These Underliers were the sole hope for a new generation of the A’kweth. Could they be reborn on a new planet, with no parental figures, and yet survive? They had to. Spock could not fail in this. He would not.

“Captain,” he said, “we know the geological substrate of the Vulcan locations that housed the A’kweth. Can your sensors pinpoint locations on this planet that might suit them?”

“Possible.” 

“Please do so.” 

Captain Grahir scuttled away. 

“Dr. Kalomi.” Spock was energized now. “We must act quickly. These rocks are the survivors of Vulcan’s Underliers. They cannot be born successfully into a cold cargo bay. I will alert the council, but we cannot wait for approval.”

She proudly drew herself up to her full height. “Ambassador, I’m the chief botanist for Federation terraforming projects on New Vulcan. This is my responsibility. If anyone objects, I’ll take the blame.”

Spock nodded his gratitude. “I hope it will be acclaim rather than blame, but I thank you.” 

Captain Grahir returned with two members of her crew. Without a word to the humanoids, they began rolling the living rocks onto an antigrav sledge. 

Spock used the time to send urgent messages to Sarek and the High Council. His tricorder beeped. Grahir had sent him data on three possible locations. 

“Where?” the captain asked. 

Spock scanned the data as quickly as he could. “Are these equivalent in your eyes?”

Grahir twitched. “Aliens. Unknown.”

“Very well.” Spock showed Grahir the screen. “Let us go to the site closest to the Vulcan settlement. Can you return my nephew to our home?”

“Uncle, no! Please, I can help,” Sbirek pleaded. “They sing, don’t they?” He waved his tricorder. “I can play music for them.”

That, Spock realized, was a genuinely useful proposal. As their mission didn’t appear to be exceptionally dangerous, Sbirek deserved a place. “Very well,” he said. “Captain, can you beam us to this location?” 

Grahir swiveled, touched a control panel set into the floor, and they were gone.

The landing party, including Grahir, materialized on a desolate stretch of green serpentine rock. A hot wind scoured the surface. 

“Please take the lead,” Spock said to the captain.

“I taste,” Grahir responded, and plunged into the rock. Spock raised an arm to prevent Sbirek or Dr. Kalomi from touching the acid she left behind. 

A minute later Grahir popped back into view. “No,” she said. “Farther.” She scurried forward as the others guided the sledge behind her. 

Grahir continued carving test tunnels about every 100 meters for nearly an hour. Spock wondered at her requirements but did not wish to slow their progress by asking for explanations. 

Creaking bones aside, he was enjoying the trek immensely. This landing party—with a human, a Horta, a Vulcan, a half-Vulcan, and a sledge of 23 Underliers—might well have been members of the _Enterprise_ crew, trudging across a strange new world, hoping to save a species. His tricorder whirred as he analyzed life signs on the rocky plateau: largely cacti, hardy blue-green grasses, something similar to lichen, and abundant insect life.

As the morning sun rose higher, Dr. Kalomi began to wipe perspiration from her brow. The A’kweth children, Spock noted with some trepidation, were starting to squirm. Whether they were struggling to be born, or simply enjoying the heat of the day, he could not tell. Sbirek passed his hands across the moving sandstone in wonder.

“Here,” Grahir said. “Stop. Ready.”

“Excellent,” Spock said. “Thank you, Captain.” He turned off the antigrav feature on the sledge and watched it settle slowly to the ground.

First things first. “Dr. Kalomi, if you have tri-ox in your bag, you should make use of it.” 

She puffed out a little breath. “Yes, you’re right, Ambassador. And please call me Leila.” She rooted through her bag and eventually found both a hypospray and the light robe often favored by human visitors to New Vulcan.

Spock took the hypospray and applied it to her upper arm. “Call me Spock. As humans like to say, ‘Ambassador’ makes me look around for my father.” 

She grinned, then sighed in relief. “Thank you. I feel better already.” She shook out the robe, pulled it over her head, and lifted the hood. “I have some water I can share.”

“Thank you, no.” Spock and Sbirek would not require water for several hours yet. Grahir had no thirst. But Spock chided himself for embarking on such an expedition without considering supplies. 

“Sbirek,” he said, “I believe it is time for music.” 

He took off his cloak and offered it to Dr. Kalomi. “Please sit on this and rest, Doctor.” 

“Leila,” she reminded him. “And that’s very gallant.” There was just a touch of mockery in her small smile. “Thank you.”

Spock sat next to Grahir while Sbirek searched for the right musical piece. He finally decided on a plaintive Vulcan lullabye and scrambled atop the sleeping stones to play it. There he stretched out on his belly like a lizard warming itself on a rock. “They feel so good.”

Sbirek’s embrace of the A’kweth reminded Spock of those precious minutes he had once spent linked with two humpback whales. George and Gracie had spoken to him in the link. But much of their typical song was too high-pitched for humans or Vulcans to hear. It would be wasted on the A’kweth, who dwelt in a different deep altogether. Still.…

“Sbirek,” he said. “Do you remember your physics lesson? On Earth, elephants can communicate across ten kilometers using infrasound between 1 and 20 Hertz. I can adjust your trico—”

“No, I can do it! I can!” Sbirek slid off the A’kweth. He sat cross-legged and went to work. Ten minutes later, he lifted the tricorder triumphantly. “Done.” 

Spock allowed himself some unjustified pride in his young relative. “I believe the transmission will work best if you place it on the ground.” 

Sbirek put the tricorder beside the sledge and turned on the sound. 

And what a sound. Grahir began to hop, and Dr. Kalomi flattened her hands on the ground to feel the vibrations. It was unlikely her human hearing captured anything she would call music. But Spock and Sbirek could hear what sounded like a bass line to the earlier lullabye. The notes the Vulcans heard would be just the tinkly top notes for the A’kweth.

Sbirek giggled, a sound Spock had never heard from him before. He offered a full smile in return. “Well done,” he said.

“Now.” Captain Grahir spoke through the translator. “Now!” 

One of the A’kweth was cracking open. Spock could see a pearlescent pseudopod emerging from the sandstone chrysalis. 

Grahir made a harsh, grating cry and plunged beneath the sledge. She emerged a few seconds later on its far side. She then turned and began tunneling beneath the sledge in a basketweave pattern. “Move!” she told the others, and they backed a few meters away. 

Grahir worked so rapidly that within minutes the sledge and its contents slipped sideways and then crashed several feet beneath the surrounding rock. Grahir popped up and began using the broom-like fringe around her carapace to sweep sand and stones over the A’kweth children. The others hurried to help her, whisking rock with their hands and feet.

That task completed, Grahir herded everyone away from the cavity that held the children. Sbirek’s tricorder, deeply buried, was still broadcasting a basso profundo lullabye.

They waited quietly, the wind fluttering their clothes and hair and the earth vibrating soothingly beneath their feet. Ten, twenty minutes passed. The urge to take a closer look was nearly irresistible. 

At last Grahir spoke. “Firstborn,” she said. Whether she detected the birth through scent, hearing, or telepathy, Spock did not know. He saw no evidence of a child, but that was likely for the best. The A’kweth lived in the substratum, after all. 

More minutes passed. “Second,” Grahir said. Shortly afterward the sound of cracking sandstone became louder as more and more children burst through their rocky shells. 

Grahir whirled, her outer arteries pulsing. “Fear! Fear! Fear!” She scuttled toward the nest she had made. 

“Keep your distance,” Spock warned Sbirek and Dr. Kalomi as he hurried after her. 

“What is it?” he asked Grahir. He scanned the pit, and caught only a glimpse of what looked like a huge, white seal streaked in shades of pink. It quickly disappeared into the rock.

“Link now,” Grahir told him. “Now.”

Spock fell to his knees and opened a meld. 

“Not just with me,” she told him once the link had restored fluid communication. “With the children. They’re looking for their parents.” Grahir visualized Spock's hand flat on the serpentine rock. 

Oh. He lay down and extended both arms, searching for a connection. The A’kweth were singing. He listened, trying to sort out individual voices, words, cries. He sensed curiosity as well as panic and confusion.

He ventured a soft hello. Immediately, 23 minds focused on him, crying “Help! Where are we? Where are the old ones? Who are you? What happened? Who is that with you?”

“I am the alien here,” Grahir told him, and she slipped out of the link.

Overwhelmed, Spock curled onto his side. “Quieter, please.” The din subsided gradually as the message was passed along. Several of the children touched his mind directly, poking awkwardly at his consciousness. 

Despite their power, they were still children. Spock tried to formulate his answers simply, kindly. “I am Spock. We are on a planet called New Vulcan. The home we once shared has been destroyed, but the alien, Captain Grahir, and her ship have saved you.” He did his best to wall away the view of destruction that Grahir had shown him, but to no avail. The A’kweth children saw all of it.

“Oh, no, no, no, no.…” These Vulcans knew how to feel, and express, despair. “All the old ones are gone? All our beloved? All?”

“I grieve with thee,” Spock whispered into the rock. 

The singing dropped into a register far below Spock’s hearing, and Sbirek’s tricorder cut off abruptly, as if crushed. Soundless minutes ticked by for so long that Spock feared the dreadful news had killed the A’kweth young. 

They needed a mother, Grahir had said. That was not a role Spock had ever expected to play. He sent out a thought. “Turn within and find the memories of your ancestors. They will guide and comfort you. You are not alone here.” 

A long pause, and then a voice. “We don’t know how.”

Spock was distracted by a hand on his arm. “Uncle, come back.” Sbirek and Dr. Kalomi were still nearby. He had forgotten.

“I am well,” Spock assured Sbirek. “Do not fear.” He lifted his arm and let the boy crawl in under it. A direct link was out of the question, but he could let Sbirek eavesdrop on his own connection with the Underliers. “Would you like to meet the A’kweth?”

“Oh, yes!” 

Spock brushed away tousled hair and touched his fingers to Sbirek’s temple. “My friends,” he said, “this is my young relative, Sbirek, also of the house of Surak. He brought you the music of your birth.”

“Greetings,” Sbirek said in the link. 

To Spock’s astonishment, this greeting was returned with a playful upward push to the rock that he and Sbirek lay on. Children, he reminded himself. They are all children.

“Do you remember Surak?” Sbirek asked eagerly. “What was he really like?”

“Hmm.” Initially, the humming sound seemed almost human. Then it deepened, and the ground quaked. “Oh! Oh, there he is!” The A’kweth pictured for Sbirek a night scene of Mount Seleya and the Vulcan desert, lit by T’Khut. A tall Vulcan was plastered to the ground, the wind puffing up his robes, as an adult A’kweth, larger than a house, loomed over him.

_The ancestral memory still lived with the children._ Spock dropped his head onto his hand and thanked whatever unknown power was responsible. The odds of successfully transplanting the A’kweth to this planet had just increased substantially.

“Thank you,” Sbirek said with solemn courtesy. “I always wanted to meet Surak.”

“Where are the rest of your people?” One of the children asked. 

“Most of them died,” Sbirek said matter-of-factly. “The rest of us are….”

“Sick with grief,” Spock finished when he glimpsed Sbirek’s unspoken words. Had Sbirek drawn that conclusion himself, or heard it from Sarek? 

“Our bonds are broken,” Spock explained to the A’kweth. “This planet does not yet feel like our own.”

That sentiment was shared. “There aren’t any G’teth berries!” one child complained. “The fi-kov-hatik who adorned us aren’t here.”

“Do you see the human woman nearby?” Spock asked. “She is Dr. Kalomi. She will bring some of those species back to us.” Here the A’kweth memory inserted itself again, flashing botanical images too quickly to grasp: the karanzhi, elmin’lak, cir-cen, alem-vedik, and even the nocturnal mu’yor-wakik. 

Whether all those species could share this environment, Spock did not know. He offered a caution. “Be glad also that there is much new to explore here. We can delight in diversity, as your ancestors taught Surak.”

“Infinite combinations,” Sbirek added. 

“Yes,” Spock agreed. Sbirek’s parents had taught him well.

“Who is the Other?” the A’kweth asked. “It isn’t Vulcan like us.”

“No, that is Captain Grahir, who brought you here. She is a Horta, a silicon being from a planet called Janus VI. Her people restart their species every 50,000 years. We can learn from her.”

The A’kweth had another kind of interaction in mind. “She’s so fast!” one exclaimed with obvious envy. “Would she play with us?”

Spock smiled. “I think she might.” 

“Let’s ask her whole crew,” Sbirek suggested. “They would like it here.”

Spock could feel Sbirek tiring, so he was glad for an excuse to ease the boy out of the link. “That is an excellent idea. You must ask the captain.” He sat up and helped Sbirek sit too. 

“That was fun,” Sbirek murmured. He leaned back against Spock’s chest, his eyes half-closed. A small smile played across his lips. “They feel like part of us, don’t they?”

“I am the Other, the Other is me,” Surak had preached. Spock liked Sbirek’s translation. 

A conversation with the A'kweth had transformed Surak’s life. Perhaps the A’kweth could soothe the despair of the surviving Vulcans? 

No. Spock quickly spotted the error in his thinking: the A’kweth and his Vulcans must heal _each other._

“Dr. Kalomi,” Spock asked, “could you assist Sbirek and return to the ship with Captain Grahir? Sbirek needs rest, and you must tell the High Council what has happened.”

She hurried over to pull the wobbly boy to his feet, a job Grahir was not built to do. “I’m sorry,” she told Spock, “but I can’t leave you here alone. This is still unknown country.” 

“My scans revealed no predators,” Spock said. “Do not fear.” 

She shook her head. “Come back to the ship with us.” 

“If I drop the link, it might be years before another Vulcan encounters the A’kweth again. Please.”

“No.” She was adamant. “No, you have to come with us.”

Grahir and Sbirek had touched the Underliers’ minds, but she had not. She didn’t understand who they were or why Spock couldn’t let them go. 

He reached up for her hand and pulled her down to sit beside him. “It must be lonely to be a human surrounded by telepaths,” he said. “Would you like me to show you whom you have saved?”

She was understandably hesitant. 

“I will endeavor to keep the link limited,” he assured her. That earned him a wry smile. 

Dr. Kalomi took a deep breath and considered. “Will you see what I feel?” she asked. 

“Unlikely. You have only to view the A’kweth as I have seen them.”

“All right,” she said softly. “All right. Show me.”

He brushed his fingers into the golden hair at her temples. “Look,” he said. And he showed her the children’s initial fear and their grief for their elders. He helped her feel the songs she couldn’t hear. He explained how Sbirek’s question had sparked the revival of the A’kweth’s ancestral memories, and how delighted the children had been with Grahir’s ability to burrow alongside them. He even displayed the list of plant companions the A’kweth had requested, and he felt her amusement as she took note. 

Finally, he opened a bit of his mind and showed how bonding with the A’kweth had begun to heal his and Sbirek’s wounds, how the bonds might heal New Vulcan itself. He pictured the stone walls he had once built around his heart and demonstrated how they could be lifted up and tumbled down by living stones. 

"Walls," she whispered. She dragged in a shaky breath and gripped his arm. “Thank you,” she said in the link. “Can I tell you….” She sat up a bit taller. “I loved Spock. He couldn’t love me, but that didn’t change how I felt. It’s silly, but I came here to feel closer to him.”

Spock did not want her to suffer the pain of unrequited love her whole life. He was free now to tell her. “Dr. Kalomi. Leila. He could have loved you, in another time. I did. Our happiness was brief, but it was real.” There he had to close the door to memory.

“Oh!” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, I’m glad. Thank you. You’re such a good man.”

“And a very, very old one,” he said. Romance was beyond him now. He pictured himself gray and wrinkled and hunched. She laughed.

“Please, Leila. Go and tell the council what we have accomplished while I stay here and maintain my connection to the children.” He eased her out of the link.

She wiped her eyes. “All right,” she said at last. This time Sbirek had to give Dr. Kalomi his hand.

“The wind is picking up. Let me get your cloak,” she said. She went to get the garment she had been sitting on earlier. 

“Thank you,” Spock said, as she handed him the cloak and what remained of her water. “I will await your return.” He pulled the cloak around his shoulders and again lay down on the rock, resting his head on one splayed hand. 

“Back soon,” Grahir said. 

Spock heard, rather than saw, the others beam up. His attention was back with the A’kweth. “Tell me about your new subterranean world,” he suggested. “I cannot see it as you do.”

He heard a babble of voices, describing sediments and geodes and taste and temperature and burrowing insects and diatoms and.… He patiently sorted through them all. Putting aside vision for his other senses required some mental contortions. But space, he reminded himself, was just as dark as the substratum. This was a new medium to explore.

Seeing the _Enterprise_ in his mind, the A’kweth demanded more details. And so he took them with him to his science station, flipping through data on planets, nebulae, gravity wells, and the like. They were fascinated. He finally had to call a pause, as the mental gymnastics were simply exhausting. “I must rest,” he explained. “Will you stay here? Perhaps you will sing?”

The request seemed to delight them. They muttered among themselves for a while, apparently discussing options. Then, to Spock’s surprise, they plucked from his memory a score from a multi-species choral group he had heard many years before. They couldn’t match the pitch, but it didn’t matter. With his mind linked to theirs, he could _feel_ the notes not only in his head but in the vibrations of the stone all around him. Unearthly beauty indeed, he thought. He closed his eyes and floated on the waves of sound.

He was nearly asleep when he felt a tug on his right side—not painful, just strange. He placed a hand over his heart. Something had broken there, and not in the way of sentimental love songs. 

He ran coolly through the diagnostic possibilities. Already he was gasping for air, sipping oxygen that his body wanted to gulp. Such rapid weakening meant his condition was serious. Should he open his communicator and call for help?

He did not wish to die in a hospital. Far better to choose this remarkable place. 

He felt a frisson of fear, acknowledged it. This would soon end. Soon.

It was right to be dying here, buffeted by the wind, on the planet he had chosen. If it meant the loss of his katra...well, that was of no more use to these new Vulcans than his DNA. Better they should look to the people of their own time than remember a world that would never be theirs.

“We remember,” the A’kweth said. “Come and stay with us. We need you.” Already the children’s voices were maturing, their thoughts merging harmonically. “All Vulcans are our ancestors.” 

His first impulse was rejection. An end was welcome. He had done his best for his people. His work was done.

“We have a whole new world to explore and thousands of your people to bond with. It will be a great adventure.”

Ha. Spock curled up, knees to chest, eyes closed. _Adventure._ He had longed for it as a child, lived it as an adult, experienced its consequences as an old man. Would he now restart, frolicking in the foundations of a world with creatures much greater than himself? 

It was Jim Kirk’s voice he heard now. “Of course you would, Spock. Go!”

Of course he would. He pressed his hand to the stone. It was warm, alive. He let go of the past, long since lost to him, and slipped into the dark.

********* 

*******

*****

***

*

When Sarek and the landing party returned at mid-afternoon, the music had gone silent. Spock lay on his side, half buried in sand. His cloak, tucked under one shoulder, thrashed in the wind. 

Sbirek leaped toward Spock. “Uncle, come back!” He tugged at the hand that was still pressed to the rock. “Come back!”

Sarek hurried after the boy. He saw at once that Spock was dead. “He is gone, Sbirek. Do not grieve.” Impossible. “Spock lived long.” As if that would ease the pain of a child who had lost everyone he loved. 

“No,” Sbirek cried. He wrapped his arms around Spock’s torso and keened. “No more!” The rock quivered beneath them.

Dr. Kalomi brushed past Sarek and stooped to rub a hand across Sbirek’s back. She wept. 

A moment later Captain Grahir approached and nudged in beside Sbirek and Dr. Kalomi. “Still alive,” she said. 

Sbirek wailed. “They’re gone and he’s dead.”

“The A’kweth are alive,” Sarek said. “You can feel it, can’t you, Sbirek? They’re here beneath us. 

“We will make this place our koon-ut. Everyone of our house who journeys here will remember how you and your friends brought the A’kweth to New Vulcan.”

Sarek lifted the boy into his arms and let him bury his face in his shoulder. “I grieve with thee,” he said into Sbirek’s ear. That was truth. “It is difficult to accept. All that lives must die.”

Dr. Kalomi scooped a handful of sand from beneath Spock’s arm and let it trickle slowly through her fingers. She completed the thought. “Passing through nature to eternity.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Samuel Barber, [Adagio for Strings ](https://youtu.be/lKrxPTePXEQ)
> 
> Surak's encounter with an Underlier is described in _Spock's World,_ by Diane Duane.
> 
> _Hamlet,_ Act I, scene 2:  
> Do not forever with thy vailed lids  
> Seek for thy noble father in the dust.  
> Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,  
> Passing through nature to eternity.
> 
> [Vulcan Language Dictionary (VLD)](https://www.starbase-10.de/vld/) So useful.


End file.
